The typical onboarding process involves the new hires filling out forms, getting introduced to bosses and colleagues, and watching slides about how work is done in a company. And as you may already know, those can get boring fast and don’t guarantee that the onboarding process will positively affect the new employees you just passed in your rigorous vetting processes.

If you want to spice things up and are looking for creative ideas to enhance your employee onboarding, you’ve come to the right place. Here are nine of them.

1. Onboard Them During A Team Building Event

While team-building events don’t occur daily or weekly in your company, it might be great to time the onboarding process with one. Letting your new employees join in the fun as their onboarding process will surely make it very memorable for them.

If the new hires are remote workers, onboarding them during the team-building event is still doable. It’s easy and inexpensive to do, and all you need to do is to set up a few cameras and start a video call with them. This is one of the fun ways to welcome new employees virtually, and you don’t need to hesitate to do it for them.

2. Have A Selfie Party

Instead of trying to make new hires remember every face and name in the company, you might want to let them have selfies—or groupies—with each coworker they’ll work with in the future.

Aside from being a fun activity, letting them take pictures with their colleagues can speed up their formation of bonds with them and will make sure that they’ll remember their names faster.

3. Virtual Tour

If the new hires are primarily working remotely away from your office, don’t forget to give them a virtual tour of your office. It doesn’t matter if your office is as small as a bedroom. It is essential to let your new workers feel that a real and existing company employs them.

And if you’re feeling a bit more adventurous, you can even turn the virtual tour into virtual office Olympics for the new hires to meet their future colleagues online. There are many ways to do this. For example, you can start with making the contestants and new hires race on who can get the picture of your office in map applications on the web.

4. Give New Hires New Employee Kits

While most of the items in your office may be free and accessible for all your employees to use, giving them some stuff that they can call their own can be fun and relaxing. Some of the things you can include in the new employee kit are pens, notebooks, mugs, and even a personalized pillow!

5. Play Guess Who’s The Boss

Playing guess who’s the boss in onboarding is just an opportunity you shouldn’t pass up. The game is simple. You give your new hires a couple—typically three—of hints. The hints may be as simple as hair color or as complex as speaking accent. It will force the new hires to roam around and talk to people in the office to find their or your boss, which can be fun to watch.

If the new hires are remote workers, work on your business communications channels before doing this. After all, it can be challenging to play this game if the only way they talk to or see people in your company is through email or your website alone.

6. Give Them Free Food

Free food is always welcome and appreciated. It can instill gratitude and make new hires feel better and welcomed while going through your formal onboarding process. Be sure to ask them what foods they are allergic to or don’t like before giving them the goodies!

And if you have the budget, you can start an onboarding party. Take the chance to celebrate and welcome the new hires, and give your other employees a chance to let loose and relax. Starting a party to onboard new team members won’t hurt anyone except your wallet.

7. Start A Tradition Or Let The New Hires In On One

For your new hires to feel more welcome in your company during the onboarding process, you might want to start a tradition with them or let them in on one. One of the common onboarding traditions some companies do is to let the previous new hire talk to the new ones. This tradition will let the new employees know that you expect them to stay long enough for them to do the same favor given to future new hires.

8. Buddy Shadowing

If you’re more worried about new hires learning the intricacies of the job waiting for them, you can initiate a buddy shadowing system for them during their onboarding. This process is simple. You get someone from the team where the new hires will be assigned and appoint them as the neophytes’ onboarding buddy.

Once assigned, you can let the new people follow the onboarding buddy and allow them to observe how work is done in your company. However, be sure that the ‘buddies’ you’ll pick for them are willing and enthusiastic. Aside from showing them how work goes in your office, the buddy should also introduce them to other workers.

Of course, you can act as the onboarding buddy if the work the new hires will do is similar to yours.

9. Hand Out A Checklist

On the formal side of things, make sure to give the new hires a checklist of what they need to do or learn throughout the onboarding process. This checklist will keep them on their toes and allow them to check if they’re absorbing the information that they need to perform well in their roles.

Conclusion

Those are just nine creative ideas you can use to enhance your employee onboarding process. Of course, you’re not limited to only picking one. You can even include all of them in your onboarding!

Also, nothing is stopping you from modifying these ideas as well. Feel free to change them to your heart’s content as long as you know that doing so will enhance your employee onboarding process.